“If you had the chance to rename yourself, who would you say you were?”
“I’m not entirely sure what you mean,” the girl coughed. Her eyes were rimmed with the red of sleep-deprivation, wine and stimulants.
“Give yourself a title. A name. An alternative.” The pen was ready in her hand. What a fascinating case, she thought. This was the kind of thing she’d worked hard for, and all her efforts had been put into it. Sylvie Citron was a young psychologist who had struggled for a long time, uncertain what to make of her brilliance. Coming from a wealthy family, she never had any option besides success. Her passion for science was adopted from her father, who spent his life as a neurologist before his death; a result of an aneurism. Her mother, a former ballerina, committed suicide when she was nine. She always resented the arts, and suppressed her emotions, attributing the most valuable parts of life to reason and science. Art was for the fools, but she was fascinated by such jest. Having never gotten anything below an 85% in any subject, she prided herself on her academic competence. She was settled in her office on the corner of 15th and Patriot St., among other young professionals who were also prematurely successful and intellectually manufactured for success and nothing less.
Oftentimes, she’d see her fellow neighbors in the offices across the hall and on various floors in the elevators, in the city, and always in company. She never shared the likes of such company, but she was envious of those who effortlessly were successful and never alone. The young lawyer across the hall, Kaitlyn Stone, was an example of such. The two knew each other only in passing, but Sylvie’s ears were susceptible to all sounds of Kaitlyn’s seemingly ideal life dampening her own ion comparison, resulting in her inadequacy. Kaitlyn, the young, beautiful lawyer, hadn’t passed the necessary exams to enter the doctoral program she’d dreamed of, and therefore was stuck with no alternatives to taking the bar exam. Sylvie sneered at Kaitlyn in passing, but was greatly disturbed by the reminder that she would never be as charismatic. The girl sitting in front of her, however, was a golden opportunity.
The girl in front of her opened her mouth, only to close it. She swallowed. Her wavering eyes stared at the psychologist curiously, long enough to motivate the psychologist to inquire further but short enough to eliminate any progress.
“I can’t say.”
Sylvie readjusted her posture and leaned forward towards her client. “Hey,” she soothed. “This is a safe place. You can tell me anything.” The girl stared straight through. He brown eyes glimmered with thoughts until her sadness pushed through her dam of self-control, drowning her eyes in tears.
“You may think it depraved,” she wavered.
“You can tell me anything.” The eye-contact was impenetrable. Sylvie, while awkward in her own right, was **** good at her job, especially with her emotionally disturbed patients. It was her talent.
“I can’t say… I can’t access it in spoken word.”
Sylvie pressed her personal opinions down and focused. Sylvie, who was not exactly judgmental, found herself taking her job too seriously. She viewed the mentally ill as weak, and thought her intelligence should be used to restore the damaged human mind, to strengthen and rationalize the behavioral and cognitive components of the sick. This girl before her was hard to crack. She assessed the girl, scars on her arms from qualms causing harm, and decided to take a different approach.
“I would like you to pretend you’re standing across from someone. I want you to imagine this person as a neutral, compassionate person. Imagine you only have five minutes to speak to them. This person isn’t like anyone else, for this person possesses a trait which attracts you and compels you to trust them. You look in their eyes, you look past into their mind and see reassurance. They ask you your name. What would you say.”
The girl leaned forward on the couch, elbows on her thighs, propped so hands could support her head, holding her chin against her knuckles. Her bloodshot eyes said it before her mouth did.
“I would pull out poems. I always keep some in my purse. I have them on scratches of paper, napkins, impulsively writing as I felt it enter me. I wouldn’t need to say my name, because if you mean what you said when describing this person, they would know me. They would already know my name.”
“What would they call you?” Sylvie consciously monitored her tone, hoping to not sound too desperate. She knew girls of this kind had the ability to manipulate.
“Well, they would already know. And when knowledge is a shared thing, what point is there to say it? You can only address something so many times, but feeling it is the difference, That’s where the significance lies.”
Sylvie exhaled, trying not to sound too exasperated. It was nearing four o’ clock, and she already felt bored of the girl’s hesitation. “How does that person know who you are? How would they know what you’re called.”
Her eyes darkened, redder than ever. “They would know, because by having already known, they would feel it—not see it, and not hear it. It’s a force, not a title, not a name. It’s a being.”
“What is this being?”
“It’s my existence. It’s in my poetry.” She moved her hands and reached for the water glass on the table, took a gulp swallowed. She delicately smacked her lips, adding a seductive lick. Sylvie kept the same face, peering past the girl’s distracting gestures. “Maybe you can see it sometime.” Her voice was marked by set syllables of monotone and dull.
“Bring it next time.” Sylvie consciously tried not to rush her, but she couldn’t help but grow impatient.
The girl stood and collected her belongings. Sylvie stood also, guiding her to the door, the way she did with all patients at the end of all sessions. The girl was walking towards the doorway when she nonchalantly added “You’ll see it soon.” She left shortly thereafter, and Sylvie never saw her again.